Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

or his voice. I oughtn't be telling you that, because it means that I'll forget your face and voice someday,
too. (But don't take it that way.)
I'm in a Kinko's writing this. I haven't said that yet. It's downtown and open twenty-four hours. It's
maybe onea.m. and I'm the only customer here on this side of the store. Two other people - homesick
German tourists, I'm guessing - are across the room trying to send a fax.
I think heaven must be a little bit like this place - everybody with a purpose, in a beautiful clean
environment. They even have those wonderful new full-spectrum lights that make you look like you've
just returned from a stroll in an Irish mist.
Why am I here? I'm here because I still don't have a computer, and I'm here writing this because today I
got a call from the RCMP out in Chilliwack. They called to say that they'd found your "highly weathered"
flannel shirt, and in its pocket, your Scotiabank debit card. It was tangled in some bulrushes in a swamp
beside a forest out there, found by some kids shooting BB guns. I asked the RCMP if they were going to
organize a manhunt, and while they didn't laugh aloud, they made it clear that one was not being planned.
How dare they. All they gave me was a map.
And so I'm typing this letter out. I'm going to print it and make a thousand copies, and come sunrise I'm
going to go out to that swamp and its surrounding forest and I'm going to tack these letters onto the trees
there with a pack of brightly colored tacks I saw up by the front desk when I registered to use this
machine.
I know that kind of forest so well, and at this time of year, too: spiderwebs vacant, their builders snug
inside cocoons; sumac and vine maples turned yellow and red, smelling like chilled candy. The hemlocks
and firs and cedars, evergreen but also everdark. The way sounds turn into shadows, and how easy it is
to stay hidden forever should that be your wish. You're the Sasquatch now, searching for someone to
take away your loneliness, dying as you live with your sense of failed communion with others. You're
hidden but you're there, Jason. And I clearly remember from when I was growing up, the Sasquatch was
never without hope, even if all he had to be hopeful about was bumping into me one day. But isn't that
something?
You might ask me whether I still believe in God; I do - and maybe not even in the best sense of the
word "believe." In the end, it might boil down to some sort of insurance equation to the effect that it's
three percent easier to believe than not to believe. Is that cynical? I hope not. I may sell insurance, but I
grieve, I accept. I rebel. I submit. And then I repeat the cycle. I doubt I can ever believe with the purity
of heart your Cheryl once had.
Cheryl.
We never once spoke about her. We never even spoke, period. I never told you that her mother
phoned me about eight years ago - I'm listed in the book - and she said that
until that day she'd always believed you were involved in the shootings, but then, "It's the funniest thing. I
was making coffee this morning, I went to put an extra apple in Lloyd's attachécase, because the apples
are so good this time of year, and inside his case, between two folders was a paperback about the
massacre, and it was open to the page with Jason's photo - I hadn't seen that image in years. I don't
know why, but I finally realized Jason was innocent." Stupid, stupid woman, but a woman whose
daughter was lost in the worst imaginable way. As you were never a father, you can never imagine what it
is to lose your child. That's not a challenge -how grotesque if it were. It's a simple statement of fact.
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